BECAUSEof these things I love the chrysanthemum; because of these things I follow its evolution with a brother’s interest. It is, among familiar plants, the most submissive, the most docile, the most tractable and the most attentive plant of all that we meet on life’s long way. It bears flowers impregnated through and through with the thought and will of man: flowers already human, so to speak. And, if the vegetable world is some day to reveal to us one of the words that we are awaiting, perhaps it will be through this flower of the tombs that we shall learn the first secret of existence, even
as, in another kingdom, it is probablythrough the dog, the almost thinkingguardian of our homes, that weshall discover the mysteryof animal life.
THE END